Do people reduce compliance with COVID-19 guidelines following vaccination? A longitudinal analysis of matched UK adults

Wright, L.; Steptoe, A.; Mak, H. W.; Fancourt, D.

Background: Governments have begun mass vaccination programmes for COVID-19, but available vaccines do not confer immediate immunity and vaccinated individuals may still be at risk of transmitting the virus. The UK Government has not exempted vaccinated individuals from behavioural measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19, such as practicing social distancing. However, vaccinated individuals may have reduced compliance with these measures, given lower perceived risks. Methods: We used fives waves of monthly panel data from the UK COVID-19 Social Study to assess compliance following vaccination. Compliance was measured with two items on compliance with guidelines in general and compliance with social distancing. We used matching to create comparable groups of individuals by vaccination status and month of vaccination (January vaccination and February vaccination) and used fixed effects models to estimate changes in compliance between October 2020 - February 2021, a period which overlapped with the second wave of COVID-19 in the UK. Results: Vaccinated individuals were broadly keyworkers or older aged individuals. Compliance increased between October 2020 - February 2021, regardless of vaccination status or month of vaccination. There was some evidence that individuals vaccinated in January complied less with social distancing in January and February than matched non-vaccinated individuals, though associations were small and there were no similar clear differences in any month comparing January vaccinated with February vaccinated individuals and February vaccinated with non-vaccinated individuals. Conclusion: There was limited evidence that vaccinated individuals reduced compliance after receiving vaccination. Vaccinated individuals in the sample were older on average and the follow-up period post-vaccination was relatively short (1-2 months). Results require replication in other populations.